


for the agony i'd rather know

by vilebloods



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blanket Fic, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic, Specific Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilebloods/pseuds/vilebloods
Summary: Thancred is staring at her as she does this, she’s almost certain, but doesn’t look up to confirm it. Instead, she presses her fingertips to the exposed skin of her cheek, trying to discern a difference in temperature.“So that’s been settled. Moving on, would you care to tell me what in the seven hells it is you’re doing now?”
Relationships: Warrior of Light & Thancred Waters, Warrior of Light/Thancred Waters
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV - Thancred Waters x WoL Recommendations





	for the agony i'd rather know

**Author's Note:**

> There's is a very brief and non-explicit mention of self-harm early on in this.
> 
> WoL's name is pronounced chah-nye. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

It takes the entire descent down the Norvrandt Slope for Chane to remember that the bottom of the sea is cold.

The knowledge is not new to her, having long been filed away in the back of her mind since the journey beneath the surface of the Ruby Sea into the narrow chasm of the Turquoise Trench. That trip feels like it was a thousand years ago, the dive to the fairytale palace under malms of water with a princess waiting for a hero to make a timely appearance and come to her aid. A past life, one where she could live without fear of a beast lying in wait, taking form within her flesh.

The path that the Ondo have opened that delves into the gorge is treacherous, the slick coral and rock making the passage unforgiving. Alphinaud is the first to slip and take a tumble, saved from falling into a pool below only by Urianger’s hand snapping out and grabbing onto his collar. They slow pace after that, all of Alisae’s teasing of her brother ringing hollow, and by the time they reach the first stretch of somewhat even ground, Chane can tell the weariness has begun to set in for all of them.

That, and the familiar chill on her skin.

Her sense of touch had begun to fade sometime around the mad dash to assemble the Talos. It had been mild at first, a mere dulling of the rub of leather against her palms and the gentle touch of sun on her face. After ascending the mountain, and Vauthry, and Emet-Selch and  _ G’raha Tia _ — it had worsened. Any contact on to her skin was utterly numbed, the sensations of heat and cold becoming mere memories to her. The ability to feel pain was still there, to a certain point (she had checked in a moment alone, pressing the sharp edge of her cooking knife to the side of her arm until her nerves flickered back to action), and as long as her hearing and sight remained unimpaired, Chane saw no reason to mention it to the Scions.

The change is disturbing, but she’s adjusted, as she always has. As long as she can see what’s ahead and behind her, she’ll continue marching along. Chane has already prepared herself to sacrifice more before the end is in sight— which in retrospect, may have been hasty of her. It leaves her ill-prepared for something to gradually return to her, rather than ebb away.

Somewhere between the third and fourth sprawling cavern that twists into half a dozen dead ends she begins to notice it in full. The stiffness in her joints that make each of her movements awkward and stilted, her muscles going rigid in a way so sudden that every joint in her body  _ burns  _ in protest.

Ryne, who is so lovely, having not strayed out of Chane’s line of sight since they departed from the safety of shoreline, breaks away from where she’s been lingering at Urianger’s side the moment she manages to catch her eye. “Chane? Did you need something?”

“I fear all the walking is beginning to wear on me. How are you faring?”

“I can keep going, but … a short rest would be nice. Especially if you feel like you need one, too.”

Close behind them, Y’shtola hums in agreement. “We’ve made good time thus far. A moment to catch our breaths seems deserved.”

Chane’s smile is sincere when Y’shtola’s sightless gaze fixes on her, knowing all too well that she sees right through her game of asking without asking. She doesn’t press her on it like she normally might, on another day, in another world. Y’shtola’s soft touch is reserved for only the times and places where one is operating with a noose around their neck.

Ryne dashes up to relay the information to the others, everyone else quickly doubling back to voice their unanimous agreement. The cavern chamber they find themselves in is given a second look over for any aggressive wildlife that might’ve slipped through their first sweep, and Chane calculates each movement of her hands to minimize tremors when she beckons Alphinaud over and offers him her pack. “If you’re hungry, I’ve leftovers, and whatever Hanji-Fae gave me before we left.”

“What’s inside all these thermoses?” he doesn’t hesitate to take it from her, undoing the tie to rummage inside without a second thought.

“It should all be coffee,” Chane can see Urianger and Alisae’s heads turn in unison as she speaks, their interest clear as day, the latter immediately making her move to ambush her brother from behind. “Help yourselves. I’m not hungry.”

Save for the squawk Alphinaud makes when Alisae shoves her arms under his to snatch the Warrior of Light’s deceptively large traveling bag away, the Scions settle into the grotto with a relative sense of calm. The twins hand out pies misshapen by their unkind journey beneath a tome on the ancient history of Amh Araeng, and Chane heads to the back of the cave, taking great care to keep her gait as natural and even as she can. It’s more difficult than it sounds, her limbs steadily becoming more stiff and sluggish with each step, and by the time she reaches a rock formation that will suitably hide her from the rest of the party, her hands seize with the need to tremble.

The sand is wet where she kneels down in it and isn’t that novel, she realizes, when she thinks back on when it was last that she could discern the difference between damp and dry. A branch of coral glows a ways above her, emitting a different kind of light than what hangs heavy over the rest of the world, forcing her to look and see how her hands shake when she’s trying so desperately to make them still.

Chane knows well enough that if a child falls into a river in early spring before the sun has hung full and long enough in the sky to warm the water as it has the air, they shiver and quake and speak as though their mouths have been filled with stones. Their skin takes on the color of their blood and if nothing is done for them, that’s the end of it. She has not slipped into waters yet bound to winter, but her body can no longer measure the difference, overfilled and blanched with suffocating light for so long that this sudden waver has sent it careening off into something she can’t control.

As if it matters. All she’s done on this star is danced to the tune of someone else’s song, every step in time, even when the chorus had broken off into two violent diverging verses. She can’t remember the last time melody was clear, when the words were still simple for her to follow along with ease. Ishgard and its war seems a hundred years ago, the frost that’s now taken up residence inside her body the only memory of it that remains untouched by her fatigue.

When she tries to use one hand to remove the glove on her other, the simple movement evades her. Her fingers fumble and slip when she tries to grasp for purchase against the dark leather and tug it off and away, a thing she’s done a hundred times before. She allows herself a few more seconds of fruitless fidgeting, the result of trying to do it the proper way, before she gives and throws her pride to the wayside. It’s much easier to aim a finger against her bared teeth, careful to take only what she’s sure is the glove between them and pulling her hand back in a single, sure motion.

“I was sent to inquire as to the status of your appetite, but I can see you’re otherwise occupied.”

Chane does not start. She hasn’t given Thancred the satisfaction of surprising her with his jarring silent appearances for years, willing herself out of it somewhere between Leviathan and Ramuh. It hasn’t been something she’s  _ needed _ to watch for, since coming to the First— a gunblade does not lend itself to stealth, the noise of its exploding aether as much of a taunt as anything the man could possibly quip out. Frontline fighters have little use for the cloak and dagger game Thancred played for all the time Chane’s known him, but she’s grown accustomed enough to the change that the careful switch back to his old way of moving leaves her thrown off guard.

It’s that, or her hearing is beginning to leave her as well, and one of those is much preferable to the other.

“I’m not hungry,” she says, after letting the glove clenched between her teeth fall to her lap. “I ate before we left.”

For someone of a fairer complexion, a change in color brought on by a sudden chill might be visible. For Chane, her skin is the same color as it always is, a blackened blue that hides bruises along with blushing. It gives her no new knowledge as to her current condition, only serving to make the tremor in her hand more apparent as she spreads her fingers and flexes them.

Thancred is staring at her as she does this, she’s almost certain, but doesn’t look up to confirm it. Instead, she presses her fingertips to the exposed skin of her cheek, trying to discern a difference in temperature.

“So that’s been settled. Moving on, would you care to tell me what in the seven hells it is you’re doing now?” 

There’s no anger in his voice, tiredness the winning emotion of the day, as it is for all of them. Nothing Chane can say or do will fix it or ease their burden in any significant way, not until they have a clearer view of what they’re aiming for down here, at the bottom of an emptied ocean— so she doesn’t try to.

She lifts her eyes to meet his again, her hand still pressed above the line of her own jaw. “Some few weeks ago, after the third Light Warden, my sense of touch left. I’ve been more numb than not for a good while.”

“And you said nothing about it,” he says, brow furrowing further.

“No, I did not. It’s a natural consequence of my aether being this corrupted, and a common symptom of those undergoing the transformation into a Sin Eater,” she gives a shrug, the stiffness of her muscles making it a markedly weak one. “From what Alisae’s told me, there’s no treatment for it. I figured we had more pressing matters to worry about.”

“That’s not the point, Chane,” and she knows it isn’t, already knows where this is going, can see the conversation as it veers in a hard right to take them down ‘communicating your wants and needs is important’ road, and  _ he _ is the last person she wants to hear that from, ever. 

She can only do the needful thing and interrupt him before he has the chance to get into it.

“Since we’ve been here, I’ve begun to regain it. I don’t know why or how, but the farther down we go, the more I can feel,” swallowing the discomfort that sits heavy at the back of her throat, she lifts her hand up and away from herself, offering it palm up to Thancred instead. “And now my body thinks it’s becoming hypothermic, perhaps from the shock of being without any sense for so long. I’m not sure that’s what this is, though I cannot think of another answer, so I was trying to feel if there was any difference between my fingers and my face.”

The words rattle off her tongue with ease, nothing but the barest strain managing to make its way through to her monotone. It seems silly now that she’s said it out loud, to compare temperatures from different parts of her body when she can’t even determine how cold the air around them is. All she knows is that it’s damp and smells strongly of salt, and neither of those things have been more than a memory to her for weeks.

Thancred looks at her, and not for the first time, she cannot guess what he is thinking. It’s worse when he says nothing, because at least when he speaks there’s enough there that she can cobble together some kind of read on his thoughts, or at worst glean whatever it is that he  _ wants _ people to be hearing at the moment. Right now, there’s nothing but the neutral line of his mouth, the heavy weight that clings his shoulders, as it has for all of them for so long now, and tells her nothing she doesn’t already know.

Chane’s not expecting his own hand to reach out to cup hers, to feel it all in no half-measure when he presses his thumb into her palm and she’s bowled over by how warm he is, how she can feel the heat emanating from his half-life half-real body. The chill that’s settled over her is so obvious now that it seems ridiculous that she might’ve wondered at it before, that if someone who’s only here in spirit can almost burn her with a touch, how far gone must she be?

Her world has been fuzzy all along the edges for a while now, the corners of her eyes softly blurred and tempting her to wander off the path and become lost in the fog. It makes her almost miss what Thancred says when he speaks again.

“You’re cold enough that I’m concerned.”

Her hum of a response is cut short when he releases her hand and she finds herself forlorn at the loss of it, any lingering trace of contact fading in an instant on her frigid skin. She might expect that frost that’s been growing within her to spring forth, following the lines of her veins before they blossom, dead and white, down the length of arm. The image is equal parts pretty and morbid, something too distasteful to be said aloud, pulling her thoughts firmly back beneath the surface for long enough that she barely notices as Thancred busies himself unholstering his weapon, allowing him to shed his coat with greater ease.

The sound of the gunblade sinking into the sand is not enough to pull Chane back to bright-eyed alertness, not fully, not enough to stop Thancred kneeling down into her line of sight from being anything short of baffling, like a picture taken ten chapters ahead of where she is in a book. She notices how severe the black chest piece looks, free of any outerwear, too late to put the dots together before he’s throwing his duster over Chane’s shoulders and enveloping her in its expansive warmth.

Or, she thinks he was likely aiming for her shoulders, but underestimated the difference in their size, and ends up plopping it over her head instead. It’s no less warm, though much darker, and conjures up timeworn memories of blankets pulled tight over her head on early mornings, how she’d cocoon herself once her mother had left for the early patrol and burrow down into the heat leftover from where she laid. 

Perhaps it’s closer to a dream than a memory, the way it pains her like a thing not meant to be relived in full.

She hears Thancreds muted “Ah, my apologies,” and automatically reaches to help, her arms moving before she can think to stop herself, lifting the coat from where the lining catches on one of her horns. The weak light greets her along with the out of place, stern look Thancred now wears, which Chane’s fairly certain means that he’s embarrassed and trying not to show it.

“It’s all right,” she says, letting Thancred wrap her up in the garment to his satisfaction. “I suspect I’d be fully covered, even if you’d left it alone.”

“True enough,” he glances down to where the excess fabric is pooling by Chane’s feet, the hem beginning to soak in the moisture from the sand. “But you’ve never been fond of hoods, have you?”

“I prefer to avoid them, yes,” Chane says, hooking her hands into the holes of the sleeves to pull the coat securely around her, luxuriating in the residual body heat that now soaks into her skin. The brittle layer that ever swells beneath her flesh, steadily replacing anything soft and living with bloodless porcelain, seems to halt at the touch.

Thancred withdraws his hands, resting them on his knees where he stays crouched in front of her, not yet making a move to leave. “Now, the question that remains— would any school of healing magic be able to help this along?”

“I’m capable of some healing without the proper gear, Thancred,” she cottons on to his implication quickly enough, the moue of displeasure on her face appearing before she can suppress it. “There is nothing Alphinaud or Urianger can do for me.”

Chane can see that her answer displeases him, but she knows that she’s right. Regeneration magic provides little warmth, none that lasts for any useful length, and she’s nearly certain that’s the only thing that will truly help her now.

“If it bothers you so much, you can go fetch Alphinaud for me.”

“You just told me—”

“Alphinaud had to sleep in my bedroll with me, when we were travelling in Coerthas, has he ever told you?” her eyes flick down to the ground as she curls into herself a fraction more. “He almost froze to death the first night we had to camp outside of a settlement. I woke up in the night to the sound of his teeth chattering, and he hadn’t the strength to fight me when I dragged him over, so that was that.”

When she lifts her gaze, Thancred is watching her with that painfully careful look of his again. It’s hard to know what to make of it, when she was hoping a story about their dear prodigy needing to be forcefully cosseted might lighten the mood a bit. She exhales, light and soft, letting her head drift gently to the side before she speaks again.

“What I mean to say is, he won’t mind if I use him to warm myself,” Chane leaves the unspoken ‘if you’re uncomfortable’ hanging off the end, swallowing it down as if to keep it from adding anymore weight to the air that seems to hang so stifling around the two of them.

It’s an easy out she’s offering him, a chance to step back with no further awkwardness. Unnecessary, perhaps, given that he’s the one who approached her and has taken it upon himself to fuss, but Chane has known Thancred long enough to have accepted that she can never guess what it is he intends. She’s long realized that he’s more mask than man, after the false bravado he wore when she first joined the scions was soon enough stripped away to the reveal the self-loathing that lay at his core. That bitterness is what she might’ve guessed was always festering underneath, a pool of tar that held him down from the Praetorium all the way to the First, where it finally began to leak out. It kept him low and distant and sharp in a way that none in their party could stomach.

Bitter rage against the cruelty of circumstance was not something they held highly in the civilized nations, she thinks. But maybe if it’s the sort of a sweeping cold front that presses on without regard, the kind that can persevere despite conditions, no matter how many times it’s beaten back, if it continues on with a gentle smile and a hand that fells gods at request— a savage of few words and biddable demeanor might do the trick for them, then.

She pastes on one of those shallow, pleasant faces on for him now. His shoulders slump and he turns, sitting down next to her, back to the rock. “I love the boy, make no mistake, but he’s intolerable while caffeinated. It would be remiss of me to subject you to the brat in your current state.”

The giggle it shocks out of her is a weak, raspy thing, the most coherent response she can muster. Chane’s told she’s infamously hard to get a laugh out of, which she always denies, but the sound is unfamiliar enough that it takes her off guard, and that much speaks for itself. 

“That is why people drink coffee, isn’t it? To become more energetic,” she says, clearing her throat. “He’s not so different from how he is without it.”

“Which is the issue,” Thancred helpfully supplies. “It takes some time to come to appreciate our friend the way he is, for good reason. Dealing with him when he has twice the energy to be himself with, that is another challenge all together.”

There was tension in his body when he first sat down, but most of it has ebbed away with a few words. He betrays no hesitation now when he lifts his arm closest to her, skirting it behind her back to rest his hand on her side and pull her against him, each movement aching in its gentleness, as if he’s handling something primed to shatter.

Chane would have an observation to make about it under other circumstances, something too blunt and exacting to be said aloud, but Thancred is warm. Even through the odd, thin metal of his breastplate, that kind of enkindling warmth known only to living, breathing things leaks out. Her body shivers before she can stop it, the cool air around the both of them now secondary to heat that she’s been enveloped in. The sudden shift is not unlike that of her body reacclimating to sudden cold after weeks of lacking it, though perhaps not as not quite as jarring— something about it strikes her as softer, a warm caress of sunlight instead of a glass of ice water, and the tremors that race through her limbs subside soon enough. 

No words come to her once she’s tucked against him, too focused on the sensation of her muscles and joints gradually defrosting to think of much else. Her own penchant for silence only goes as far as the other person in the room, filling up all the blanks for her, but when they go quiet, Chane’s calm mind begins to rattle.

This kind of silence from Thancred is different. There’s no heaviness to it, no pressure to slowly crush her under. She feels no need to gauge his expression or guess what might be turning in his mind in the moment. It’s enough that she’s here, touching something else that’s alive, held steady and in place.

Before she knows it, her body has relaxed enough that her head droops down to rest on Thancred’s armor, the scales of her cheek scraping lightly against the metal. His breath hitches, just once, but it’s enough for her to notice. “I’ve not fallen asleep.”

“Full glad am I to hear it,” he replies, a tinge of something rough in his voice.

Chane blinks once, letting the rational part of her brain supply the order to ignore it, then blinks again and slowly lifts her head up. Just enough so that she can peer at him from beneath her pale lashes (Which make her look ‘a bit ill’, as Ardbert had told her that morning when she’d opted to forgo her face paints. It took him a disappointing amount of time to read the pall it cast over the conversation and apologize profusely).

It is pointless, of course, as the neutral cast to Thancred’s features hides whatever it was that caused his reaction.

“Are you quite comfortable?” he says once it’s clear that she’s not going to lower her eyes back down.

“Yes, I am. Thank you.”

They lapse into another lull after that, the soft chatter of the other Scions and rhythmic dripping of water filling up the void in their stead. She stares at the rough wall of rock just to the side of Thancred’s head as she continues to leech off his warmth, not in the mood to attempt and unnerve him through unbroken, wordless eye contact. 

Though, the fact that she gives it so much as a passing thought is some proof that her wits are returning to her.

Another handful of moments pass and she finds herself clenching her hand beneath the heavy blanket of the coat, feeling the prick of her nails digging into the meat of her palms, but little else. She slips her fingers out of the warm cocoon before she can think better of it or tell herself of easier ways to test her sensitivity. 

“Thancred, are my fingers cold?” she says, wiggling them where they stick out of his coat. 

Chane’s kept her head where she left it, but her eyes remain closed, finding little reason to stare at Thancred anymore. It means she doesn’t see it when he squeezes them with the hand that isn’t still resting on her waist, feeling when he makes contact instead. If there’s a difference from the first time, she can’t tell. Her senses remain muted, her bare skin still wrapped in a weighty shroud that leaves every impression of touch distant and too far removed from the truth of it to be of any use.

“There’s been some improvement,” he answers, not letting go of her hand. “One must question why it chose now to do this, however, if it’s been going on for as long you say.”

“It’s whatever’s down there. The thing we’re walking into.”

“You don’t mean ‘place’?”   
  


She hums, a placeholder while she considers her words. For all that her senses may be fading gradually from her, there’s a distinct surety in her mind when she avoids labeling what awaits for them further down as a ‘place’. It is not a  _ somewhere _ that Emet-Selch wishes to go to, she thinks.

“No,” she says, exhaling softly. “I don’t.”

He does not question her again, and Chane does not elaborate. Soon after she realizes he’s released her hand, and she pulls it back and out of the open air, but does not worry herself with moving more than that. Thancred will have to push her off if he wishes her to go, she decides with a quirk of her lips. She’s sure he will eventually, when the time to move along approaches. 

All the more reason to not become so comfortable, but then— with a moment taken to stop and breathe, to catalog what she can feel and what she cannot and the possible reason for each one, it leaves her vulnerable. There’s nothing to stop the ache of exhaustion from sweeping in after being held at bay for so long to settle on her like a blanket of lead. When was the last time she slept through the night, it reminds her, and hadn’t merely laid in bed, trapped in a restless haze?

She opens one eye, part way. Thancred’s turned his head to the side since she last looked, facing the direction of the far cavern wall. Chane doesn’t much care to see what’s caught his interest there, or try and vie for his attention. If she can commit the lines of his of face to memory, as he is now, that’s enough. It doesn’t matter how long she’s seen him, how many years they’ve known each other. He’s left her behind with such discouraging regularity she can only think it prudent to stop and ingrain the image to her mind while she can.

Her Astrometer sits back in a closet in the pendants, and the stars of the First remain banished beneath a dam of oppressive light. Chane needs neither of these things to know that her fate is already sealed, and that this time it will be the Warrior of Light who strays, for once and for all. 

“Thancred,” she says, both eyes closed again. “If I fall asleep on you, I apologize.”

There’s a heavy pause, perhaps a minute or more, before he answers. “You just told me you weren’t asleep, Chane.”

“Yes, but I also told you I was quite comfortable.”

“Comfortable enough to fall asleep on my armor?”

“It’s as I said.”

He doesn’t answer her for so long that Chane assumes he won’t. Sleep has already begun to gather behind her eyes, heavy and intoxicating in its promise of an escape from her consciousness, however brief it may be. 

“How many trespasses of mine have you absolved me of in the time we’ve known one another? If you ask something of me, I have no choice in the matter.”

She’s slipped too far by the time he speaks— if she hears it, she regards it as a whisper from a dream.


End file.
